


The Most Important Lie

by mistyzeo



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Relationship, Asexual Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Disguise, Great Hiatus, Light Angst, M/M, References to Illness, Schmoop, Sherlock Holmes on the Asexuality Spectrum, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 08:21:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2060862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyzeo/pseuds/mistyzeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I had forgotten what this felt like; all of the waiting, the build-up to the day of the telegram’s arrival, was like a torturous climb up an impossible slope.  I could see the summit, but could get there no faster.  Now, released from the bonds of my humble practice and the city of London, I was soaring down the other side, arms spread wide, unknowing where my adventure would take me, except for the glorious, long-absent, beloved contents of its destination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Important Lie

**Author's Note:**

> A strange, _very_ self-indulgent hiatus-era fic that wouldn't leave me alone. Also features probably uncharacteristic amounts of crying, but I like my Holmes made of marshmallow. Sorry not sorry. I should thank [bilbospantaloons](http://bilbospantaloons.tumblr.com) and [jaradel](http://jaradel.tumblr.com/) for beta reading.

The signal came within a week of its estimated arrival date. I had cleared my calendar for the month, and my bag had been packed for days on that particular May morning. The coffee in my cup had just been poured when the telegram was delivered.

All it said was _Paris, France._

Paris! I had been to Paris in the past and should like to go again, but I would not have any time to visit now. Paris was only a stopping point along my journey. I put the cup down and hurried off to collect my valise, and I was out in the street hailing a cab before the coffee had finished sloshing into the saucer.

I took the cab to Victoria station, and then turned around and took another to St Pancras. I bought a ticket for the first train to Dover, and waited, sweating even in my summer suit, unable to quell my excitement. It was two hours before I could board the train, and another interminable five minutes waiting for the stragglers to embark. Then we were lurching and rumbling our way out of the station, and I felt the first cool breeze on my face in what felt like a lifetime.

At Dover, I got on the ferry to Calais, and spent the afternoon watching the waves on the Channel. I couldn’t stop smiling. The other passengers must have thought they were in the presence of a madman, given the nearly-manic grin on my face. I had forgotten what this felt like; all of the waiting, the build-up to the day of the telegram’s arrival, was like a torturous climb up an impossible slope. I could see the summit, but could get there no faster. Now, released from the bonds of my humble practice and the city of London, I was soaring down the other side, arms spread wide, unknowing where my adventure would take me, except for the glorious, long-absent, beloved contents of its destination.

It was evening when the ferry reached Calais, but I was not going to stop so soon. I boarded a night train for Paris and dozed in my seat, despite the elation coursing in my veins. When I awoke, I was in the city of love.

I took the time to wash my face in the lavatory and brush my rumpled suit, and then I was off again, headed for the ticket agent once more.

“Bonjour,” I said in my best public school French to the young man behind the bars. “I believe there is a ticket reserved for Monsieur du Houx.”

“Ah, yes,” the young man said, rifling through a box of envelopes. “Here it is, Monsieur. Your train leaves in three hours. Please enjoy your trip.”

I took the envelope and thanked him, my heart beating once again rapidly against my ribs. The first hurdle was past, and the code had been successful. This was only the second time we had attempted it-- and I hoped it would be the last-- and I felt as though I was getting away with rather a lot, under the noses of people who cared nothing at all.

Inside the envelope was a ticket to Munich; another overnight train. I wondered if I might be leaving Europe altogether; would I be sent as far as the Ottoman Empire? But, it was too early to jump to conclusions. I had been frequently and fervently warned against that kind of reckless behavior.

+++

In Munich, I left the train station on unsteady legs, exhausted by two nights without a proper sleep, and stepped into the street. I walked two streets south and found myself on Landwehrstrasse. There was an hotel on the corner. In I strolled.

I was greeted in English at the desk, for my origin must have been obvious.

“Doctor Sacker,” I said, when prompted for my name. “Doctor Ormond Sacker.”

A message was waiting for me, as was the key to a single room. The latter fact was disappointing, but the former nearly made up for it. When I had been shown to my room, I opened the note.

_Wait for the one who at night will help; see to it you can be soon away._

Nonsensical, but that was what I’d expected. Picking out every third word gave me a much more hopeful message: _Wait one night; see you soon._

I took off my suit and fell into the small, clean bed in my shirtsleeves and drawers. When I awoke in the afternoon, it was to the sharp pangs of hunger. I hadn’t eaten more than I had slept since I’d left my rooms in Queen Anne Street. I had tea in the hotel, and then set out on a brief walk around Munich. Waiting for the time to pass in my room would do no good, and I couldn’t bear to be still. _Soon._ Would it be a day more? Two? How soon was soon?

A park near the hotel gave me comfort, and I imagined being approached right here, in broad daylight. His face was so clear in my mind, it was as if I could see him before me. I wondered how he would have changed since our last rendezvous. I wondered how much he would tell me.

Late, very late, I returned alone and disappointed to the my single room and succumbed to a dream that was fairly rippling with anticipation.

A wire had arrived the next morning when I awoke, and it was brought to me with my breakfast. I tore it open before I even took the lids off the food, and sat down in dismay.

 _Have been delayed,_ it read. That was all. It had originated from a town in Holland. That brought me some relief. Being so close to Switzerland once again had worried me, but I knew it could not all be so cyclical. He would never double-back on his own trail unless something very dire had happened.

I spent the day waiting and fretting. I could get a train to Amsterdam without any trouble. Had he only just arrived there, or had he been there for some time? Holland was much closer to England than Munich. Why couldn't he just come home?

Another wire came that afternoon, after tea.

_Copenhagen at once._

Doctor Sacker had been in Munich long enough, thank God. I barely stopped to pack my bag, and fairly ran through the streets to the station. Doctor Sacker boarded the seven thirty five to Berlin. I was in Hanover by midnight, and in Berlin by four in the morning. Another platform, another carriage, another exhausted nap with my hat over my eyes, and it was nearly noon by the time I arrived in Denmark.

This wasn't fair, I thought, as I made my way on stiff legs out of the station. None of it was fair. We should be at home in our flat, sipping brandy by the fireside in our dressing gowns, our feet stretched out towards the grate. We should have mysteries to solve from our armchairs, and burglars to foil at midnight. I should be protecting him, my service revolver in my pocket, his trust in me unshakeable. It wasn't bloody _fair._

"Can I offer you some assistance, sir?" a porter asked me, catching sight of my ungainly limp and my bedraggled appearance.

"I'm all right, thank you," said I, shying away. I was losing steam quickly, and I hadn't the slightest idea where I was going. I couldn't just wander the streets of Copenhagen, not in this state, and certainly not forever. Was he just supposed to find me—?

I turned back. The porter was a tall young man with sharp gray eyes and a hawk-like nose. He wore a bright red, high-collared uniform and a ridiculous little hat.

"I'm afraid I don't know the way to my hotel," I said, priding myself with the steadiness of my voice.

The porter graced me with a little crooked smile that made my breath catch. "I'd be happy to escort you," said he. "Please, allow me to take your bag."

I handed it over. For a moment, our fingers brushed, sending a spark through me that turned to fire in my blood. My heart was hammering in my chest. I fell into step behind the porter, leaning on my walking stick a little less. He led me down streets and around corners, along boulevards and through a garden or two, and all the while I could smell the sea air. It was clean and fresh, blowing away all the worry I had carried with me over the last week, the last year.

Finally we came to a small hotel with neat white shutters and a little red door.

"My name is Vernet," I said to the young lady at the desk. "I require a room for a week, if you please."

"At once," she said. "Just yourself, sir?"

"My wife will be joining me."

The young lady smiled, while behind me the porter coughed.

"Of course," she said, choosing a key and starting to come out from behind the desk. "This way, please."

"That's all right," I said. "I can show myself up."

She handed me the key after a moment's hesitation, during which I smiled at her as beguilingly as possible. "It's on the second floor, sir, at the back."

I ascended with the porter at my heels, and found the lock into which the key fit. As soon as we were across the lintel, I shut the door sharply, snatched my bag from the young man, and crushed him in my arms.

He was trembling violently, clinging to me, wrapping me so tightly in his embrace that I could scarcely breathe. I didn't want to. I didn't care about anything so trivial anymore.

"Holmes," I said.

"Oh, God," he said, squeezing me harder. "John."

"How could you do that?" I demanded, feeling the angles of his body under my hands, entirely too sharp for my liking. 

"Your bloody _wife_?" he returned, his fists clenched tight in the fabric of my jacket.

"Coming up to me in the street?"

"I couldn't wait," Holmes said, and buried his face in my neck. "I couldn't."

"How long were you there?" I asked.

"Since I sent the wire," he said. "My estimate as to your arrival time was exact, almost to the minute, but I couldn't stay away."

"You need to sleep," I said. I pulled myself away, so that I could look into his beloved face. It was pale and drawn, his youthful disguise falling away as if it were made of smoke. "You've run yourself ragged."

"She'll wonder. You shouldn't have said anything."

"Who?"

"The clerk, downstairs. She'll wonder where the fellow who carried your bag has gone. She'll wonder why your wife never turns up."

"I don't care," I said, hugging him again. I plucked his cap from his head and combed a hand through his hair. It was cut very short, shorter than it needed to be to be hidden under a wig. "You've been ill."

He shrugged, shook his head. "I'm better, now."

"Holmes," I chided. I wiped away the make-up on his face that hid his pale skin, his well-earned wrinkles, the greying hair at his temples. "How am I meant to take care of you—"

"You're not," he said sharply. "Watson, I'm not having this argument with you again."

We hadn't let go of one another. He was right: we didn't need to cover the same ground over and over, dredging up hurt and accusations and frustrations. Moriarty was dead, but his network spanned the globe, and Holmes had to work alone. Being able to see him once a year was risk enough. Anyone could have followed me from my doorstep, from place to place, despite the circuitous route. I hadn't sensed anyone on my trail, but an interested party was bound to notice my annual absences if we repeated them often enough.

I watched his eyes flicker down to my mouth, and I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue. He smiled, glancing up again hopefully. I cradled the back of his head in my palm and leaned in. Our first kiss in a year was soft and tentative, as if we both worried we were not welcome. As if we could have been forgotten. As if we could ever forget. Our second kiss was firmer, deeper, and Holmes’s long hands grasped at the back of my coat, trying to pull it off me even as I embraced him tighter.

We struggled out of our outerwear, jackets, my waistcoat, his trousers. We fell together onto the soft bed, almost frantic in our desperation for proximity. I found the hem of Holmes’s shirt and pushed my hands up beneath it, spreading my fingers across his back. He made a low noise against my collarbone and bit down. I pulled him closer, drawing his leg over my hip, tucking him as close to me as I could get him. He was warm and heavy, and the sensation was so familiar I wanted to weep.

“How long?” I whispered.

“No more than a week,” he replied. “I have secured myself something of a reprieve, but I cannot tarry any longer than that.”

“Take me with you,” I said into his shoulder, muffling the plea I knew would be denied against his shirt.

He kissed and then nuzzled my cheek, his smooth jaw rasping against my unshaven one, and said nothing. I hugged him tighter, hiding my face. He smelled like home: the tobacco I kept in the Persian slipper even though I never smoked it, the wood fires that should be warming his bony knees, the wool of his overcoat that hung in our foyer. I tormented myself with the smell of these things individually, but the combination of them on his skin was enough to bring me fully to tears.

“Oh, John, I have missed you,” he said, stroking the back of my head and curling himself into a comma that would almost fit into my arms.

I tried to hide my unmanly display that only got worse at his admission, but he pulled my face free of his shirt and began to kiss my damp cheeks, the bridge of my nose, my eyelids. I pushed my hands farther up the back of his shirt and rolled us so that he was beneath me, pinned under my hips. He gazed steadily up at me, carding his fingers through my hair, and I bent to capture his mouth.

Holmes does not become physically aroused, but he does not mind my own sexual nature. I was hard now, my body rejoicing in the closeness of his after so long, and he pressed his hips up against me in offer. He kissed me deeply, cradling me between his thighs, and I lifted and shoved until I had both knees on the bed. With one hand Holmes unfastened my trousers and drew out my prick, and I shuddered at his touch.

“Do you want me to get undressed?” he asked.

“I can’t let go of you long enough,” I replied, kissing him again and thrusting into the circle of his grip. “I hope you can forgive me.”

“This isn’t even my shirt,” he admitted. “It goes with the uniform and it doesn’t fit.”

“Then I suppose you are done with it.”

“Mm,” he agreed, as I pressed my face into the crook of his neck again and tried my best to drown myself in his presence. His hand was warm and soon slick with my own excitement, and his grip on my back, his knees against my sides, and his breath upon my neck all brought me quickly to my peak. I spilled with a groan and shuddered into stillness, caught between sorrow and joy.

Then we did undress, and Holmes and I climbed naked into the bed, lying on our sides so that we faced the window. I was pressed up against Holmes’s back, propping myself on one elbow so that I could watch my hand as I stroked it down the long, pale length of his side. His ear was just at the level of my lips and I couldn’t resist nibbling gently at it while Holmes attempted to review everything he’d done in the last year. He’d dispatched three agents in Germany, two in Austro-Hungary, and one in Russia. He had crossed the Caucasus and gone into hiding in Persia. He had seen the fertile fields and the dry deserts of Afghanistan. 

I imagined him standing on the place I’d been shot, never knowing it was my blood in the dust upon his boots. I imagined what it might have been like to never have been shot, and to have never met him. I clung to him too roughly, but he never flinched.

He had returned to Europe on a ship around the Cape, and pursued his quarry through Spain. It was in Spain that he had fallen ill, only three months ago, and had huddled in a castle in Barcelona, cared for by an old woman and her even older mother.

“You should have contacted me,” I scolded.

“I couldn’t,” Holmes sighed, reaching back and rubbing my hip through the bedclothes. “I was being watched very closely, and I couldn’t get a message out without drawing attention to myself. Mireia and Carme were very attentive and very protective, but to allow them to shield me as they nursed me I had to give up any connection with the outside world.”

“Where did you learn to speak Catalan?”

He made a noise of amusement. “I never did,” he said. “A few words: water, please, thank you, yes and no, but… I wasn’t really in a state to talk much.”

“Holmes, you make me very nervous,” I said, pressing my lips to his shoulder.

“It was just exhaustion,” he replied, and rolled over to face me. He was very close, his nose almost touching mine, and he wrapped his arm around my middle. "I'm much recovered, now."

"When can you come home?" I asked.

He sighed and kissed me softly. "It might be a while, yet. There is a network in South America I need to address."

"South America? Holmes," I said, "you aren't meant to rid the whole world of evil. It isn't possible."

Tucking his head into the crook of my neck, he mumbled, “I’m tired, Watson. Can’t we just sleep for a while?”

We did. For a long time after Holmes had drifted off, I lay quietly, trying to memorize the weight of his head on my shoulder and his arm across my waist. I wanted to capture each soft exhalation of breath and be able to listen to it later when I was alone again back in London. I felt the rise and fall of his ribs and tried to measure the diameter of their expansion, as if I could hold that number in my mind and therefore in my hands. His skin under my palms was warm and smooth, but there were fresh scars on his back, still pink and shiny, whose origins were unknown to me. I found the old ones I remembered and did my best to compare the two varieties, so that I might know them all when he finally was able to return.

I slept, eventually, drawn under by the forgotten sensation of Holmes against me, both of us too warm under the quilt.

+++

A chambermaid knocked on our door a few hours after we had settled into the room, and Holmes nearly leapt out of bed in terror. I subdued him just before the maid opened the door, and intercepted her in the foyer.

"Please," I said, praying to God that she spoke enough English, "my wife is not well. She's been travelling a lot lately, and I fear she's come down with a touch of brain fever."

The chambermaid's expression was that of sympathy, so I went on.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer not to have the room cleaned during the day— or seen to in any way, frankly. She cannot be disturbed." Referring to Holmes with feminine pronouns felt very strange, but he gave a feeble cough from the bed, backing up my story.

"Of course, sir," the chambermaid said, reaching back for the doorknob again.

"Thank you," I said, "thank you. Remember, no one must enter."

"No one, sir," she agreed, and was gone.

"Your bloody wife," Holmes grumbled behind me.

"Do shut up," I said, crawling back between the sheets again. He maneuvered me on top of him and tangled our legs together. I propped myself up on my elbows, but allowed the weight of my body to pin him to the bed. 

He sighed. "What shall we do with our week, my dear?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said. "I'm on holiday with my wife."

Holmes laughed, tipping his head back on the pillow and baring his throat. I didn't resist the urge to bend and bite gently at it.

"You'd make a dreadful wife," I said. "Although, lately, as a husband, you've left something to be desired."

His laughter subsided, until he was only smiling sadly at up me and carding his fingers through my hair. "I wish I could forget it all," he said quietly. "Give it all up and come home, but—"

"I know," I said, before I had to listen to him give me another excuse. His work was more important, I knew that.

"Watson," he murmured, drawing my head down to press kisses to my cheeks and mouth. "John, you know I can't stop until it's over."

"What if it ends for you before you can end it for them?" I asked. "What if I leave here and I never hear from you again? What if you—" My hypotheticals choked me.

"We can't keep going round in circles," Holmes said, thumbing away the tear that had escaped me and ran down the side of my nose.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"Let's get dressed," he said. "We'll have something to eat, and you can tell me about what I've missed in London this year."

+++

When I returned from Switzerland in 1891, I told everyone that Holmes was dead. His brother Mycroft, of course, knew the truth, and it was not difficult to pass my grief at our separation off as the sorrow of a friend. If I had believed him truly dead, I cannot imagine the depth of my depression.

As it was, I knew the whole story. Moriarty had succeeded in luring me away from Holmes with the lie about the Englishwoman at the hotel, but I hadn't gone half a mile before I began to suspect. The boy who had come for me tried to convince me that we were in a hurry, but I turned and ran back the way I had come. When I reached them, Holmes and the Professor were locked in a physical struggle that brought them again and again to the edge of the waterfall. I shouted Holmes's name and, to my momentary dismay, distracted him. He slipped, going down on one knee on a spray-slick rock, but it was Moriarty who tumbled over the edge.

Holmes and I watched in horror as he fell, but he hadn't even reached the churning cauldron at the bottom before I was hurrying along the ledge to join my partner.

"This isn't the end," he told me, with blood running down his face from a cut on his forehead. "I was prepared to sacrifice my life to ensure Moriarty's demise, but I'm afraid I must go through with it after all. The web is not destroyed with the death of the spider; someone will try to take his place."

And so we made a plan. I hated it, every detail of it, but I knew how deep this cancer went, and how hard Holmes had worked at tracing every thread, and I promised to do everything I could to protect him from afar. It included the most important lie of my career.

Citizens of London came out in droves to pay their respects to the departed detective; more people than I had ever expected. I knew the subscription numbers of the _Strand_ magazine, in theory, but this was thrice that. Privately, I compared it to the crowds that gathered when royalty was interred.

I was deceiving all of them. I was a writer of fictions, I reminded myself, edited truths, and this, like my marriage, was only another story I had to sell.

One year after Holmes's so-called fall, his brother Mycroft passed me a packet of coded documents which, he said, only I would understand. It took me nearly two weeks to unravel them— Holmes had used a book cipher to communicate with me, but with my own published stories— but in the end I had a series of letters that were brief, affectionate, and outlined a plan by which I would be able to see him again.

We had rendezvoused in Budapest, which I regret, only because I saw hardly anything of that beautiful city. So consumed was I with Holmes that I never even thought to step outside. That would mean leaving him behind, and I cherished every moment I could have with him.

Our time together was cut short by a sudden development in his work, and we said our goodbyes in the hotel room rather than risk them on the platform at the train station. I wouldn't have been able to see him off without one last kiss, one final embrace, one more clasped hand— so we did it in private, and he slipped away in the middle of the night. I awoke alone and wept and cursed him, but when I returned to London once more I was dry-eyed and stoic, the embodiment of upright British manliness. I was made of stone.

+++

This time, Holmes coaxed me out of doors to enjoy the Danish city. He tucked his hand into the subtly proffered crook of my elbow, and it felt so like our rambles through London that for a while I almost forgot our situation. But one look at Holmes with his thin face and his short hair would bring it all back. I was failing him, not being at his side. Of course, he would refuse to see it that way.

"Do you know what I miss the most?" he asked, as we looked out over the city from the top of the observatory tower that stood near the university. We could see several palaces, new and old, from our vantage point, and I wondered how many one city really needed. "Besides the obvious," Holmes added, when I glanced at him in query. "The way the Thames looks on a foggy day."

"Really?"

He nodded. "I couldn't say why. I just find myself picturing it sometimes. Wondering if it's foggy. Then I wonder about how you're faring in the fog, if you're taking a cab on your rounds, if your leg is hurting you, if the fire's warm enough. I wonder if you still take your tea the same and if you're reading some penny dreadful and if you're going to your club."

"Despite the fog," I said softly.

"Despite the fog." He had hung his head, his forearms resting on the railing, so that all I could see was the unprotected nape of his neck. There was no one else around; I bent and kissed the bump of his first thoracic vertebra.

"Let's go back," I said.

"Let's have dinner," he said instead. "Somewhere small and dark and incredibly romantic."

"Are you sure you've quite recovered from your illness?" I asked as we left the round tower's balcony.

His smile was thin, but his eyes were sparkling. "Nearly," he said. "I'm feeling very much myself."

We ate, our chairs so close together that our knees bumped beneath the table, and I knew I was staring. He kept catching my eye and blushing, looking down again at the food on his plate, moving it around with his fork and glancing up again.

"You're supposed to be eating that," I murmured.

He took a bite.

"If you won't let me look after you the rest of the year," said I, "at least oblige me while we're together."

Holmes rolled his eyes, but he did finish his meal.

Back in our hotel room, having narrowly avoided being spotted by the clerk who expected me to be with my wife, we lay together in the bed. Holmes rested his head upon my shoulder and listened with eyes closed as I read aloud from the novel I had brought. It wasn't his correspondence, or the daily _Telegraph_ , but it would substitute.

"Wait," he said, as I finished a chapter and took a breath to begin another.

"Should I stop?"

"Yes, but…" He sat up, his hand upon my chest. "Are you writing anything right now?"

"I— yes, actually. I have a contract with the _Strand_ Magazine to write them ten more stories this year."

"What are you working on? Did you bring it with you?"

"You want me to read you one of our own cases?"

Holmes sank back down, effectively hiding his face from me. "Yes," he said into my shirt. "Please?"

I got the manuscript out of my bag. I don't know why I'd packed it— perhaps I thought I'd have time before our rendezvous to work. When I returned, Holmes resumed his place half atop me and encircled me with his long limbs.

"It's a first draft," I warned him.

"Let me see if I can guess the case before the client arrives," he replied.

"You never guess," I said, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

+++

We spent the week like that, entwined around one another in bed until we were starving, and then venturing out to eat and explore. I kept Holmes as close to me as ever I could, always touching him to reassure myself he was there, and whole, and healthy. He refused to tell me anything about the work he might do in South America.

"Better that you don't know," he said, "so that if they ever come for you, you won't have to keep my secrets for me."

I doubted that the mysterious _they_ would ever bother with me. I believed likewise that I was made of stern enough stuff to resist their attempts to pry information from me. Still, Holmes was steadfast.

"I'm supposed to be dead, remember?"

He indulged me while I sulked, sitting nearby and smoking his pipe while I tried to ignore him and work on my manuscript, but after an hour it became too difficult to feign disinterest in him anymore. He undressed me in a silent apology, touched me everywhere that made me shiver and sigh, and brought me to a sweet, slow climax that left me trembling. I returned the favor by gathering him into my lap and carding my fingers through his hair for ages, scratching my fingernails gently against his scalp, squeezing my hands into fists and letting go again. It turned him into jelly, and I memorized the weight of him against me, sprawled across my body, murmuring his approval into my neck. I would need it when we were separated again.

And separated we were. I left Copenhagen without him, watching him from the compartment as he stood on the platform, wrapped in his overcoat and stock still. I had to follow a slightly less convoluted route back to London, but it was several days before I was unlocking my front door and stepping inside. The emptiness of my house crushed my chest.

I would be strong for him. He would need me to be here when he returned.

+++

Ten months later, I had only just begun to think about getting to see Holmes again, wondering where my brilliant love would lead me, when I bumped into an old bookseller on the street and spilled his wares onto the pavement. Holmes teases me about it now, but I was so distracted by the strange murder I'd been asked to assist on that I hardly saw the old man as I helped him pick up his books.

That was, until I was back in my consulting room and he called upon me. I stood up in surprise when he entered, leaning on his stick with his sack of books upon his crooked back.

"Good God!" I cried. "Holmes!"

"Oh, damn it," he said, straightening up and throwing aside the wig. "I thought for certain you wouldn't—"

I interrupted him by practically leaping over my desk and kissing him fiercely. He hugged me tightly, smelling of old mothballs and spirit gum, and I kept saying, "Tell me you're home, tell me you're home," over and over.

"I'm home," he said, and this time it was he who began to weep, though he was grinning as the tears ran down his face, streaking his horrible make-up.

"For how long?" I demanded.

"As long as you'll have me," he said, shaking all over.

"By Jove, Holmes, sit down," I said. "When did you eat last? What do you mean as long as I'll have you?"

Holmes clung to me even as he sat, so that I had to sit down beside him. I couldn't stop touching him. "It's over," he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, "well, it's almost— Moran is in London, and he's the last— oh, my God, I can't stop—"

I offered him my handkerchief, which he ruined by mopping his whole face, and still he couldn't catch his breath.

"Hush, love," I said, taking him in my arms. He hid his face in my collar, ruining that too, and I rocked him as he sobbed. It was several damp minutes before he hiccuped and pulled away, and then I kissed him softly on the mouth. "Forever, then?" I asked.

That brought about a fresh wave of emotion, but Holmes mastered that one more quickly.

"I need you to come with me tonight," he said, clearing his throat. "It's all arranged with Lestrade—"

"Don't tell me you went to the _Yard_ first!" I interrupted.

"I'm sorry, I had to. I'd barely set foot on English soil again before Mycroft had me swept away and holed up in his safe-house. I wanted to let you know, but things were moving too quickly."

"How long have you known you were coming back?"

"No more than three days," he said, grimacing at my expression of dismay. "I knew Moran had been back a few weeks, gathering funds, but I didn't expect him to make such an egregious mistake so soon."

He explained the business with Ronald Adair as I gaped at him.

"I asked that you be consulted," he admitted. "I hoped it might give you some clue that I was on my way back."

"You're an arse," I told him, hugging him tightly. "You know I don't think that way."

"Ah, my steadfast Watson," Holmes sighed. He stroked my hair and pulled away again. "You said something about eating?"

I fed him, and bathed him, and he submitted to my ministrations easily. I had left Baker Street for the sake of the ruse, but it had been easy to do. Living there without him would have been hell. At least here, with my little consulting room and my single bed, I had found a temporary normal. Holmes slept in my bed for a few hours, loose-limbed and gorgeous in my nightshirt, and I sat in the chair beside him with my novel on my lap, unable to look away.

He was real. He was home.

We caught Moran. I gave the tiger-hunting madman such a thump with the butt of my revolver that he fell to the ground, and for a moment I felt like I'd had my revenge.

Then Holmes took my hands in the sitting room at Baker Street and, in a voice so soft I didn't dare breathe lest I miss a word, asked me to return there with him. The whole place smelled of us, even after three years; I could hear his violin somewhere in the back of my mind. He was skinny and tired and had experience of criminals on four continents, and he was home.

Then I knew that revenge didn't matter, because I had my satisfaction.


End file.
